


Sleep

by aizia



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9141385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aizia/pseuds/aizia
Summary: Fareeha Amari is the glue that holds Overwatch together.(Angela Ziegler falls asleep on her often.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a headcanon I have that Angela is always falling asleep on Fareeha, but it sort of evolved into an exploration of Fareeha's role within Overwatch, because I love her too much, I think. There'll be 3 or so more chapters.

 

As members of the newly reformed Overwatch settle into their chairs around the briefing table, Fareeha recites names silently. She begins on her left; Angela sits next to her, hand resting against her cheek. Lena “Tracer” Oxton babbles on about an Emily to the attentive young man next to her, whom Fareeha remembers as Lúcio Correia dos Santos. Zarya adds to their conversation in heavily accented English. Fareeha wracks her brain for the woman’s first name. _Alexa?_

She’ll have to ask her later. It would be rude not to know.

Someone clears their throat behind Fareeha, and she turns around to find Winston standing between her and Angela. Angela blinks as if being stunned awake. “Do you need something, Winston?” she asks, not unkindly.

“Oh no, nothing like that. I just… I’ve noticed that you look… quite tired, and I know the start-up is always most difficult… you’ve been doing inventory and medical exams much more than you’ve been sleeping the past couple of days, and um… you don’t have to be here. You can sleep. I don’t have much to say you don’t already know.”

Angela shakes her head, and for the first time Fareeha notices the deep bags under her eyes. “I appreciate it, but I should stay. It is the first briefing, after all.”

Winston nods and makes his way to the center of the table. The chatter of the room eventually fades after Fareeha gestures for quiet.

“First of all,” Winston says, “Thank you all for coming out.”

Lena snorts a little at this. Winston goes on, oblivious. “I understand it was sudden.”

A few minutes into Winston’s spiel on housekeeping matters, Angela begins to lean heavily to the left from the corner of Fareeha’s eye. One glance, and Fareeha confirms that her eyes are closed. She barely knows the woman, but Fareeha is overcome by a kind of protectiveness. She’s used to looking out for her squad at Helix, and Angela is part of that squad now.

As quietly as she can, Fareeha scoots her chair over so that it nearly touches Angela’s. She gently tilts Angela so that her head rests on her shoulder. Still half asleep, Angela hums in question.

Fareeha hushes her softly. “Rest.”

Angela’s hair is silky against Fareeha’s shoulder. She smells softly floral. She makes a small noise and then nuzzles into Fareeha’s collarbone.

Fareeha has been in far worse positions.

She keeps her focus on the briefing as much as she can, and hopes, for Angela’s sake, that nobody notices the two of them. A half hour goes by before Winston finishes speaking, and Fareeha attempts to gently jostle Angela awake before anyone’s attention strays from him.

“Wha?” she mumbles.

“Wake up,” Fareeha whispers. “The meeting is almost over.”

Angela blinks out of her daze and seems momentarily surprised to find Fareeha so close to her. Abruptly, she sits straight up and blushes pink. “I am so sorry,” she mouths.

Chatter begins to fill the room again. “It’s alright,” Fareeha says, extending an arm. “I’m walking you to bed,” she decides.

Angela puts up little resistance to this. She takes Fareeha’s offered arm, and Fareeha feels like she’s supporting most of her weight as they walk down the hallways.

“Thank you,” Angela says as they make the final turn to her room. “You didn’t have to do this.”

 “We’re part of the same team now,” Fareeha offers.

Angela studies her for a moment, smiles ruefully. “You are what this group needs, Fareeha.”

Angela says nothing more before she disappears behind her door.

Fareeha wants to deflect such a claim.

 

 

It quickly becomes apparent that it only makes sense for Fareeha and Angela to train together. Their abilities are deeply—almost oddly—complimentary. They stay out long after dark, often, developing an effortless sort of give and take; one is always strong where the other is weak. Communication becomes glances, gestures, signals, nods.

It becomes a tradition to tiptoe into the kitchen afterwards, when most everyone is asleep. Herbal tea calms their adrenaline highs, and during these times, Angela is a friend as well as teammate.

They sit on the couch one night, mugs empty. Angela leans against Fareeha, eyes closed, and Fareeha feels honoured, in a way—Angela trusts her. She’s comfortable enough with her to be this vulnerable. Fareeha takes that trust seriously.

“Are you tired yet?” Fareeha asks.

Angela hums. “Almost.”

Angela speaks again after Fareeha had thought she’d fallen asleep. “I’d like to practice reaching you more,” she says.

“Reaching me?”

“Yes. There could be a situation where you’re in a hard-to-reach area, and time will be of the essence, then. I need to be well practiced in finding you,” Angela says.

“Are you sure that will be worth the time?”

Angela frowns. “Yes.”

“I take protecting you seriously,” Fareeha says.

Angela blinks. “As do I.”

“Angela, no one else here has your specific skillset. I’m a little more dispensable. I’d rather focus on protecting you.”

Angela jerks away as if Fareeha had burned her, something near fury in her eyes. “ _Fareeha_. Listen to me. You don’t realize what you do. You bring us together. People respect you—they see that you’re qualified to lead. You’re knowledgeable and experienced. You do much more than you need to, and you do all of it well. But they also _like_ you—you’re kind and you genuinely care about every single person here. You’re so refreshingly… _good_.”

Fareeha is speechless.

“You are absolutely indispensable,” Angela finishes, calmer now. “I’m convinced we’d have dissolved months ago if it wasn’t for you.”

“You mean that,” Fareeha says.

“Every word.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s just the truth.”

After bouts of silence, Angela falls asleep on Fareeha’s lap. Fareeha carries her to her room.

Sleep won’t come that night.

 

 

Winston starts handing the reins to Fareeha whenever he can. Angela notices this.

Fareeha has a talent for strategy. They trust her to organize their positions, adjust their individual tactics, and to offer advice on which abilities to utilize so that they work seamlessly as a team. She provides direction on the field through the comms, and she’s always prepared to protect someone.

Playing as a team is in her DNA.

And she trains herself tirelessly. In the morning, in the evening with Angela. Angela worries about how hard she’s working her body, and slips her electrolyte-infused protein shakes every couple of days.

Fareeha always thanks her, profusely, and never fails to get a little chocolate protein shake mustache above her lip.

It’s cute. Angela will admit it.

 

 

When she closes her eyes, all Angela can see is Fareeha, bleeding out.

When it had happened the day before yesterday, she’d been able to go into autopilot. A shot to the intestines. Hypovolemic shock. A surgery to check for organ tears, reparation of the small intestine. Peritoneum irrigated. Abdominal walls closed.

It is only alone in her room that her hands shake and the caffeine fades and the last 30 hours she’d been awake wear on her.

Truly, she had only feared for Fareeha’s life for a few seconds—before it had become apparent that the bullet hadn’t hit the aorta or the inferior vena cava. Nanobiotics had greatly sped up her recovery process, and Angela knows she won’t be able to stop Fareeha from returning to the field in a couple of days.

But seeing Fareeha, so strong and idealistic, incapacitated, had been jarring nonetheless.

Angela sighs and repositions herself. The lack of sleep is costing her focus and reaction time on the field, she knows.

There _is_ an option, but…

 _No_. Fareeha needs her recovery sleep.

Angela tosses and turns for another hour before she loses her resolve. The need for human contact (or perhaps more specifically, Fareeha’s contact, but Angela pushes down that thought) wins out, and she soon finds herself standing in the hallway, hand poised to knock on Fareeha’s door.

She knocks once and hopes she’s loud enough—Fareeha has told her she’s a light sleeper.

She sees a light flick on in the small space between the bottom of the door and the floor, and Fareeha is before her in a moment’s time. “Is everything alright?” she whispers.

“Everything is fine.”

Fareeha relaxes, and then softens. “Did you need anything?”

Angela swallows. “I can’t sleep, and I was wondering if I…” she gestures hopelessly. It sounds ridiculous even to her, now, and the rest of the sentence lodges in her throat.

Fareeha blinks, and then steps aside to allow Angela entrance. Fareeha walks to her bed, and closing the door behind her, Angela follows stiffly. “It might be a bit tight, but…” Fareeha trails off.

Angela exhales gratefully. “Thank you, Fareeha.”

Her nerves subsided, it’s then that Angela notices Fareeha’s pajamas—royal blue with many tiny ducklings. Angela grins at this information. “I like the ducks,” she says.

Fareeha laughs and lowers herself onto the bed. Angela follows suit. “I’m glad _someone_ appreciates them,” Fareeha says.

Fareeha opens her arms in invitation, then. After Angela shows no sign of movement, Fareeha looks at her pointedly. “Come here, Ange. The ducks are lonely.”

Angela can’t help the snort that escapes her. “You’re a dork,” she says, though she does as asked. Fareeha holds her close, and Angela rests her head against the soft fabric of her shirt. She smells windblown—like the outdoors—and there’s a soothing note of laundry detergent coming from her clothes. Warmth emanates from her skin, and Angela feels it even through two layers of clothing.

Angela has never felt so deeply comforted.

“How are you feeling?” Angela asks, making sure to keep off Fareeha’s stomach. “Any pain?”

Fareeha chuckles. “Don’t go into doctor mode on me now. I’m fine.”

Angela hums. “All I wanted to know.”

“How are _you_ feeling?” Fareeha asks, flicking off the lamp.

“Better,” Angela says, “now that I’m here.”

Fareeha kisses the top of her head. Angela falls asleep in moments.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just... nearly 2k words of fluff. Hope you enjoy.

 

Lena knocks once. Knocks twice. No response.

“ _Angela_?”

It’s past 9am. Not once in a decade of knowing her has Lena witnessed Angela having a lie-in. But she’s not in the medbay, or the lab, or the mess, or the kitchen, or anywhere else she could normally be found, and so she must be in her bedroom.

Another knock. Lena opens her door just a tad. “Angie, luv? You there?”

The lights are off, and the bed is empty.

Lena huffs. Fareeha must know where Angela is. Practically attached at the hip, those two.

She knocks on Fareeha’s door down the hallway. In a few moments, Fareeha appears in front of her, hair mussed and still in pajamas, to Lena’s surprise. She was normally an early riser.

“Good morning, Lena,” she says brightly, and then her brows furrow. “What time is it?”

“Quarter after nine.”

Fareeha raises her brows in disbelief. “I should be up.”

“It’s alright. I just wanted to know where Angela is. I have this pain in my—” Lena hears a rustling from the bed. She notices, then, the blonde head that rests on one of the pillows. “Oh,” Lena finishes. “ _Oh._ ” She grins.

Fareeha looks uncomfortable. “We’re not… um.” She clears her throat. “You know how Angela falls asleep on people often…”

“I think she only falls asleep on you, mate.”

Fareeha blinks, seems to consider this for a moment, and then walks back to the bed. She gently shakes Angela up, movements practiced, like she’s done this a hundred times. “Ange?”

Angela mumbles something and rolls over.

“Lena needs you.”

Angela sits up almost immediately. “Is she alright?”

“I’m fine,” Lena calls from the doorway. “Just a sprain or something!”

Angela notices Lena, blinks, and then looks at Fareeha, who shrugs apologetically. Angela stares at the ground pointedly, blushing red. “Come to the medbay,” she says as she passes Lena in the doorway. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

When Angela is out of earshot, Lena puts a hand on Fareeha’s shoulder. “Congrats, mate.” She winks and skips away.

She’s gone before she can hear Fareeha’s flustered attempt at a protest.

 

 

“Angela?”

Angela leans against the kitchen counter, a mug of tea in hand. She’s still in the flight suit she wears underneath the Valkyrie, ponytail messy and windblown from their training session minutes ago. “Yes?”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

She frowns, concerned. “Is everything alright?”

Fareeha just sighs. “You may want to sit down.”

Angela complies silently.

Fareeha takes a deep breath. “My mother is alive.”

 

 

It’s odd, to say the least, having Ana at Overwatch again.

Angela expects her to slide back into her previous role—she had been extremely influential in the first Overwatch (more so than Jack, if you’d asked Angela). But like Morrison, she’s surprisingly quiet during the briefings.

Angela can’t figure out why until she happens to look over at Ana while Fareeha’s delegating roles for a mission, and she has never seen pride so clear and glowing.

_Ah._

Ana had long discouraged Fareeha from joining Overwatch, for reasons Angela understands perhaps too well, but she appreciates Ana’s apparent change of heart, for Fareeha’s sake.

How deeply _necessary_ Fareeha is here would be enough to change the mind of someone who’d prefer she be away from the line of fire. Angela isn’t sure how long she herself would have stayed, without Fareeha acting as the sort of moral fabric they desperately needed. Angela had tried to act as such in the years before the dissolution, but she simply hadn’t had the force or the battle skills necessary. She would always be a doctor at heart.

Fareeha… Fareeha could be Strike Commander. And one Angela would support, at that.

 

  
Ana stirs sugar into her tea as Fareeha fries garlic, onions, and spices at the stove. She’s set to rinse the fava beans when Ana says something Fareeha can’t make out amongst the sizzling. Fareeha turns down the fan. “Sorry?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me about you and Angela.”

Fareeha coughs. “What about us?”

 “Oh, habibti. You know.”

Fareeha pours the beans into a strainer. “We’re good friends.”

Ana hums. “Really? I’m surprised.”

Fareeha turns on the tap, jostling the strainer to thoroughly rinse the beans. “That we’re friends?”

“That you’re not together. I have a knack for these things. I sensed that sort of… dynamic.”

Fareeha pours the fava beans and some water into the pan and sighs. “Can you stop… ‘sensing’?”

“No,” Ana says. “I’m a sniper.”

Fareeha turns around, letting the mixture simmer. “Maybe our trajectory is heading that way. Maybe it isn’t. But either way, it needs to happen on its own time. No meddling.”

“Can I say one more thing about this?”

“Alright. One more thing.”

“I would love to have her as a daughter-in-law.”

Fareeha nearly spills the beginnings of ful mudammas on the stove.  Once she collects herself, she says, “I could bring up you and Reinhardt flirting, you know.”

Ana sips her tea. “Fair enough.”

 

 

Angela practically purrs under Fareeha’s fingertips. Her hair is astoundingly soft, and Fareeha enjoys running her hands through it nearly as much as Angela enjoys having it done.

They sit on the floor against one of the couches, Angela in the space between Fareeha’s legs, her back to Fareeha. The loose shirt Angela wears falls a little down her shoulder, and she leans her head further back against Fareeha’s chest, eyes closed in the pleasure of the moment.

The warmth begins in Fareeha’s chest, and when it unexpectedly spreads lower, she swallows.

Perhaps she has a small bias for one trajectory.

 

 

Angela picks up fistfuls of sand just for the pleasure of sifting it through her fingers, and then wades to her ankles in the ocean. She makes an angel in the dry sand, after that, and Fareeha watches from a nearby log, endeared. It had taken her a few hours to figure out why Angela was so enthused by a beach—Switzerland is famously landlocked.

As a child on Egyptian beaches, Fareeha remembers holding the assumption that every person on Earth had access to a beach.

She smiles to think of it now. Not so.

Later, as the sun starts to set, Angela holds Fareeha’s arm as they stroll further down the waterfront. The autumnal air is brisk in the evenings—more so than the Egyptian is used to.  Equally unaccustomed to leaving the base without her temperature-sensitive flight suit, Fareeha shivers. Angela, feels this, of course, and stops in her tracks.

Angela’s smiling. “Are you cold?”

Fareeha shivers again. “No.”

“Fareeha,” Angela says, removing her own zip-up sweater, “the shivering reflex is triggered to maintain homeostasis when the core body temperature drops. Now take my sweater.”

“Then _you’ll_ be cold.”

“It must be at least 10 degrees,” she says. Fareeha still hesitates. “I’m Swiss,” Angela adds.

Fareeha stares at the light pink fabric in Angela’s outstretched hand, and she’s certain it’s two sizes too small for her. But Angela has that _look_ , the one that Fareeha knows by now means she won’t back down, and so she pulls her arms through the sweater. It just barely zips up, and it’s more cropped on Fareeha than it’s probably intended to be.

The pretty grin on Angela’s face almost makes up for the fact that it is mostly at Fareeha’s expense. “At least it shows off your arms nicely,” she says, squeezing a bicep before taking hold of her arm once again.

Heat creeps up Fareeha’s neck. She chuckles, but she’s flustered, and it comes out more stilted than she’d intended. (Angela smiles privately).

At Angela’s suggestion, they watch the last of the sun escape behind the horizon on a bench near the shoreline. Angela leaves no space between them, resting her head on Fareeha’s shoulder and taking her hand in her own.

Angela’s jacket smells like her, and Fareeha is all the more aware in the stillness of their position. Her eyes stray from the sunset to their entwined hands. The sight sparks something in Fareeha, a thought that won’t be pushed out of her mind.

This is what she’s wanted. This is what she has been looking for—on quiet nights when she has nothing to distract herself from a steady longing for affection, on trips to cities where couples walk hand in hand and Fareeha wishes, for a moment, that her life was a little more normal.

She has found something in Angela, and Angela in her—a friend, a confidant, and perhaps one day a lover.

Fareeha leans her head against Angela’s own.

 

 

A film’s credits drone on in the background, but Angela wouldn’t be able to say what half the plotline was. Fareeha’s arm is draped across her waist, and a blanket is strewn across them on the couch. Fareeha’s steady breathing lulls Angela to sleep.

Angela blinks awake in a few minutes, no longer on the couch. Fareeha lowers her onto the bed, and Angela gazes at her in tiredness.

“I think I owe you,” Angela says suddenly, surprising herself. “For falling asleep on you all the time.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ange.”

“No, I’d like to make it up to you.”

Fareeha raises her brows. “How so?”

“I’ll buy you dinner. Just the two of us?”

“I don’t know,” Fareeha says, and Angela’s heart stops. “In that case, I think you owe me more than one.”

Angela lazily aims a pillow at Fareeha. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Fareeha catches the pillow and kisses her forehead. When she makes to leave, Angela stops her with a tug of her hand. Before Fareeha can fluster herself, Angela shakes her head. “Just to sleep.”

Fareeha returns to Angela’s room shortly, clad in her duck pajamas and smelling lightly of toothpaste.

It’s dorky, but it’s charming. Angela is fond of her style.

 


End file.
